H5P OER Hub

“The H5P Content Hub is the heart of H5P and the soul of our vision of empowering everyone to create, share and reuse interactive content.”

And a more in-depth statement:

“The most important part of our roadmap has long been to finish up and integrate an OER Hub in the H5P authoring tool to facilitate global collaboration. It was also the most requested roadmap item by far on the last H5P Conference. It will be an integral part of the H5P authoring tool and allow users to easily share their content with every H5P user in the world! Content shared by others will of course be searchable and repurposable.”

Don’t expect this to be in your LMS next week though 😉

“When everything is done we’ll need to add the new system to our plugins. We’re likely to integrate with Drupal first allowing the community to test and give feedback on H5P.org. Drupal will probably be followed by H5P.com and then Moodle and WordPress. Much of the code will be the same for all, but each plugin must add a few UI components and implement interface functions for storing data etc.”

I guess the biggest question is around “Who will want to give their content away for free?“

If you are employed as a teacher, tutor, or trainer, you certainly can’t make your content available to the public, because contractually it will belong to your employer.

Commercial companies may ‘showcase’ some content, but this would be more of a marketing tools perhaps?

I remain a little unconvinced that OER, in any shape or form, will really take off in the same way that people share on YouTube for example.

And if they do, what what is the quality control process that can be used here? Would it be like Wikipedia, where there is some community self-regulation? What’s to stop creationists or anti-vaccination lunatics from flooding an OER with incorrect information?

There are many challenges with OER, not just for H5P, but also MoodleNet, and many other similar initiatives.

If H5P does have one advantage, it’s the amazing portability. The fact that content can be created in H5P.com, H5P.org, Drupal, Moodle, WordPress, and so on, and then MOVED from one environment to another … this cannot be under-estimated. Maybe H5P will become the standard that SCORM should have been?

Stuart is interested in all things e-learning, with specific interests in Moodle, e-learning strategy, and business development.His experience in education over 30 years, MBA in International Business, and knowledge of e-learning systems implementation, together with graphic design background, give him a unique skill set for e-learning projects.

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Stuart Mealor

Stuart is interested in all things e-learning, with specific interests in Moodle, e-learning strategy, and business development. His experience in education over 30 years, MBA in International Business, and knowledge of e-learning systems implementation, together with graphic design background, give him a unique skill set for e-learning projects.

6 thoughts on “H5P OER Hub”

“I don’t see the need to tie this issue to OER…”
1. It’s possible to relate (not tie) many factors to OER – I was discussing OER here, so it’s perfectly OK to discuss quality/trustworthiness in this context.
2. I did not “suggest[ing] it was some flaw that other resources don’t suffer from” – I don’t see that even lightly inferred in the text I wrote.

Of course! It’s perfectly fine to discuss trustworthiness tied/related/… (sorry, English it not my mother tongue, and am often not as precise as I’d love to) OER. The thing is that I wonder why it most often comes up with OER, but not with materials used for teaching in general. It was not my intention to say that you limited the problem to OER.

Translating “sapere aude” as a fairly lose “Dare to think for yourself” to me means most opinions are valid (if based on some level of evidence).

The phrase “sapere aude” is closely linked to the ideas of the “Enlightenment” in 19th century Europe, and the message is quite different, rather “Everyone is entitled to have his/her own opinion, but not his/her own facts” as it means not to blindly trust information that you encounter but to use reason to evaluate it. I just wanted to express that I personally value teaching this idea to people in general higher than installing quality assurance processes for one particular type of resource.

As I mentioned, I think the problem of trustworthiness is not something related to OER, but to information in general. I don’t see the need to tie this issue to OER (suggesting it was some flaw that other resources don’t suffer from), and you just gave a perfect example as most YouTube videos are not open by OER’s definition as they are not openly licensed.

It might not hurt to have some mechanisms to support decision making, but they can be flawed, tampered with, and people might also blindly trust those if they are in place. I’d rather vote for “sapere aude” and for putting effort into fostering digital literacy.

“I don’t see the need to tie this issue to OER…”
1. It’s possible to relate (not tie) many factors to OER – I was discussing OER here, so it’s perfectly OK to discuss quality/trustworthiness in this context.
2. I did not “suggest[ing] it was some flaw that other resources don’t suffer from” – I don’t see that even lightly inferred in the text I wrote.
Translating “sapere aude” as a fairly lose “Dare to think for yourself” to me means most opinions are valid (if based on some level of evidence).

If you are employed as a teacher, tutor, or trainer, you certainly can’t make your content available to the public, because contractually it will belong to your employer.

Copyright laws in different countries can be quite different. For examples, professors in Germany are the sole copyright holder of any teaching material that they create. It’s a little more complicated for other teaching staff at universities and I am not sure about the rules for school teachers, but given what’s common practice, they don’t have any restrictions for publishing the material that they created.

And if they do, what what is the quality control process that can be used here?

This seems to be a never-ending discussion in the OER world. I think it is safe to say that remixing materials from all kinds of sources is on of the bread-and-butter tasks of teachers. They have to evaluate information either way, OER or not. I understand the call for some higher authority to give some form of blessing, but I think digital literacy must replace it.

Yes, it’s fascinating how copyright law, and academic freedom, vary greatly between countries.
And OER crosses both of these areas (and more besides!) – which makes it quite complex.
I would like to believe that teachers and trainers evaluate every piece of OER they access and use, but I think the reality may be that many do not, or only at a cursory level.
I’ve seen countless links like “…go and view this YouTube video before class” – which are often poor quality, and only barely relevant.
So I do think there is a gap in the market, for small bites of OER, that can easily be remixed, or mixed together, underpinned with some level of community rating or quality control … perhaps some form of an “author / creator reputation” model ?